And everyone supports not rushing patients through visits, having available appointments, etc. The whole point is that we're increasingly designing a health care system where unless you are in the top 10% of income, you don't have a chance at this standard of care.

So there was zero chance they "knew it was toast" -- unless their plan was to wait 13 years for it to come to fruition.

No, instead these private equity folks saw (what they thought) was a relatively stable company with enough cash flow that they could load up with debt, pay themselves a nice fee, and then re-structure the company to make it competitive while paying off the debt.

Instead, they got hit with a double-whammy: 1) the Great Recession came, which hurt non-essential retail in particularl, making it an awful time to have to make a ton of debt payments and 2) competition got much more fierce, making it an awful time to have needed capital going to debt instead of needing store renovations and technology.

Brandon was put in a hard spot -- he neither wrecked this company, but nor did he save it. He was paid a lot of money, though, and accomplished little.

"The downfall of Toys “R” Us can be traced back to a $7.5 billion leveraged buyout in 2005, when Bain Capital, KKR & Co. and Vornado Realty Trust loaded the company with debt. For years, the retailer was able to refinance its debt and delay a reckoning."

It is certainly worth something (it certainly is in football, for bowl purposes) that our alums travel well. It helps in basketball that it doesn't matter whether the tourney is in NYC, DC, Chicago or Indy -- we have alums there with the interest and the wherewithal to attend those games. We certainly had a "home court" advantage at MSG. That a Michigan difference.

So Valenti et al needs to recognize that's a part of our fanbase. But I just wish we had more passionate, day-to-day fans like you, and just as importantly, our athletic department made it easier for fans of all types to attend the games at Crisler at a reasonable price (and time -- as noted, 9pm games suck).

I want to get my Dan Hawkins voice on and say, "IT'S DIVISION ONE BASKETBALL!! IT'S THE BIG TEN!

Do people expect to attend an event for the highest level of college sports at an arena which seats over 12,000 people and park 5 minutes or less away from the door?

Pioneer is literally a half-mile away from Crisler -- that's a 10 minute walk for the vast majority of people. I understand select people may have mobility problems, but there are solutions to that mentionied earlier. For the vast majority, unless we want to turn Crisler into the Palestra or EMU Convocation Center and have a capacity of about 8,000, some parking lots are going to be 10-20 minutes away.

Our alumni have got to be one of the wealthiest, large groups around (e.g., I'm sure Northwestern alums also tend to be loaded, but our school is four times as large), so of course when there is a big game (e.g., against MSU at MSG) we're going to show up. Who doesn't like a winner?

But I don't really give our fair-weather fanbase credit by saying, "We show up for regional finals!" That's nice, but I'm talking about the 18 or so home games, which constitute the vast majority of the season: schools like Nebraska (which haven't had nearly as much on the court success as us) easily pack more people into their home games.

They've jacked up prices, and apparently a good portion of our fanbase is so wealthy they'd rather eat the tix than sell them for a reasonable rate about half our schedule.

I have no idea why the secondary ticket market doesn't function for Crisler. I will scour StubHub, Seatgeek ahead of certain mediocre oppenents and the only $10 or less tix are in the very, very top rows, and very few $20 or less anywhere in the first level. Yet when the game comes on TV, you see huge swaths of empty seats all over.

UM needs to better incentivize those season ticket holders to get those tickets in use, along with havong more cheap seats for body bag games (though that won't make a huge difference - I paid $5 or $10 to see the opener; still plenty of open seats on the second level, where I was sitting).

Williams is a very good player, but this is supposed to be a high school basketball award, not the "5 best college prospects" and Brandon Wade (from Ann Arbor Skyline) has had a more impressive season than Williams.

Wade is averaging 23 pts and 7 assists a game and, more importantly, lead his team to a 19-0 record and the #2 ranking in the state. Williams' team is barely above .500 and has gotten blown out multiple times.

I'm sure Wililams got in the top 5 b/c he's going to Purdue and Wade is going to Duquesne, but again, that shouldn't matter.

UM football makes, and spends, an obscene amount of money regardless of whether they stay or not. If it's decided it is clearly best for the football team to have fire Drevno and Hamilton, well then fire them. No excuses exist regarding money or resources.

Far more important to Michigan's bottom line (e.g., 110,000 butts in the seats; suites sold out) is having at 10 win and up football team, which will be a solid achievement next year with the nation's toughest schedule. Potentially "eating" $3 million a year is nothing in that context.

But yes, there were numerous examples where we tactically screwed up last year nad having McKeon in there at all & no one noticing enough to call a time out, was one of them (to name another -- fades to Eddie McDoom).

Perhaps I'm confused over the terms, but a strategy would be "We need to get the ball to our playmakers on offense" and the tactics would be "Let's put Peppers in at wildcat using these type of plays."

That latter part, to be blunt, sucked in the 2nd half of 2016. And since one of the reasons we got Michael Barrett is so we can occasionally have him do that, I'd like for it not to suck in 2018.

I have no illusions that the feeding of 110,000 people requires an industrial food operation -- it can't be taken care of by artisanal sandwiches and free-trade, non-GMO chips & salsa.

But I am sure more can be done to supplement it and provide better variety.

For an easy example of how much I think this is on autopilot, I give you the prices for the non-UM football events. I attended the "Battle of the Big House" high school football game this fall and was shocked the concession prices were the same as for a U of M game. That is ridculous when you only have 4,000 people in the stadium watching high school football.

Ronnie Bell won the Simone Award (I was curious when Harbaugh mentioned it) as the KC Metro area's best football player. It's a big deal down there, and people like Darren Sproles, Chase Coffman, Josh Freeman and (more recently) Mizzou's Drew Lock have won it.

I understand that Bell was originally going to play basketball, but there are plenty of bball players who dedicate themselves just fine to football (e.g., seemingly half the TEs in pro football these days).

I'm no recruiting sharpie, but I saw Belleville play 3 times this year (including their big win over Fordson and their playoff loss to Canton) and Dobbs didn't really stand out in any of them. Julian Barnett did; Davion Williams did -- but I honestly kept having to search my program to make sure I had Dobbs' number correct.

That doesn't mean much -- perhaps he was being double-teamed on defense; on offense, Belleville relied more on its skill players winning jump balls and out running the edge on end arounds to see much blocking / mauling line play.

But I have no idea whether I should be excited by him or not. So I've decided to stop worrying about him and hope for the best, whatever way it turns out.

At a minimum -- you could even say three steps before contact, whether you think the defender hit his right or left leg/foot.

Regardless, he was, in my opinion, easily a runner -- he was running on his own and the contact with the New England player made him start to lose his balance and while he did, he leapt and went into the end zone.

Very different from, say, the Dez Bryant "catch" where he was falling the entire way.